Atlas Borne of Clymene
by She's So High
Summary: Robin won't let Raven hide from what's happened. He won't let her go it alone. Friends help friends with their burdens. PostBirthmark


Atlas Borne of Clymene

By: Lady DeathAngel

Disclaimer: I'm making no money off of this and the characters are most definitely not mine.

Warnings: um, UST? None, really.

A/N: So, I'm back with another gapfiller, this time post-Birthmark. I'm just on a roll with these Teen Titans fics. This one is also not Robin/Raven, but the hints are getting stronger. . Also, this is probably my favorite title for a story ever. The title comes from the Greek myth in which Atlas bears the world on his shoulders. His mother is Clymene which, I believe, means 'Mighty Force'. After writing the second-to-last paragraph of this story I realized that a title featuring Atlas would be perfect. You'll see what I mean. I'm not sure quite how this ficlet turned out, but please let me know what you think!

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Raven had that look on her face like she was refusing to think about something. There was no evident shift in her actual features. Her mouth was set into it's usual soft and slightly disapproving lines, her eyes moving back and forth across the pages of her book, her brow level and even. To anyone else it looked like she was simply reading. Robin liked to think he knew her better than that. He was pretty damn _sure_ he knew her better than that, actually. So when Beast Boy went to his room to do whatever it was that Beast Boy did in his room (and Robin really didn't like to think about it), and Cyborg went to touch up the T-CAR with Starfire on his heels, Robin approached Raven.

"Hey," he said, flopping onto the couch next to her.

She glanced up briefly, little more than a flash of amethyst irises, before returning to her book.

"Hey."

Robin raised an eyebrow and studied her. Raven wasn't reading anymore. She was staring intently at the pages in front of her, her entire body suddenly tense.

"Good book?" he inquired.

"Was," she muttered, closing it and setting it down on the floor. "What do you want?"

There was no preamble leading up to the question, not that Robin had been expecting any. Raven was nothing if not blunt, and she had never been one for beating around the bush. Robin had learned to respect that about her and the level of honesty they had with one another was one that none of the others understood.

"You can talk to me," Robin told her.

Raven turned her body, leaning her back against the arm of the couch and pulling her knees up to her chest.

"Oh?" she said, cocking her head to one side and wrapping her arms around her legs.

Robin rolled his eyes and mirrored her position.

"Yes, 'oh'," he told her. "You're trying to pretend it never happened. That's not healthy."

Raven frowned, her arms twitching.

"I'm not even sure _what_ happened," she shot back. "I had a crappy birthday, which I expected, and Slade's back, which was a surprise; looking back, _maybe_ I should have seen that one coming," she added, mostly to herself.

Robin sighed.

"We've had this discussion already," he said. "At least once in the last twenty-four hours. We've got a bond. I can _feel_ you. You're in denial, you know more than you're letting on, and right now, you _really_ want to punch me."

Raven's glowers always had the power to make Robin feel all of four-years-old, but he wasn't backing off. Not this time. Not when it was so serious.

Robin wasn't kidding about how unhealthy it was for Raven to ignore what had happened. It wasn't that she would forget. She never would and Robin knew that. He'd never forget the events of the last twenty-four hours either. Raven wasn't talking about it though. She was doing that _thing_ where she internalized everything she was feeling and it was all well and good when Robin wasn't personally invested, but he was, a fact made worse by the residual traces of _her _anger, fear, guilt, and shame that were currently rattling around in his body.

"I should never have mind-melded with you," Raven finally muttered. "You're _entirely_ too cheerful half of the time, you know that?"

Robin just gazed at her and she sighed. In one fluid movement, Raven extended her body, laying so that her head was propped on the arm of the couch, her hands coming to rest on her stomach, her feet perching themselves on Robin's with her toes barely brushing his ankles. She drummed her fingers on the flat planes of her abdomen before letting out yet another heavy sigh.

"Come on, Boy Wonder. If you're gonna shrink my head, let's at least be professional about it."

Robin smirked and gazed down the length of her body and into twinkling eyes topped by inclined eyebrows.

"Want me to wear a white lab coat and grab a clipboard while we're at it?"

"Whatever makes you happy," Raven said in that odd, semi-flirtatious tone she sometimes used with him.

Robin opened his mouth to draw the conversation back to where it had started originally, only to be cut off by Raven.

"Also," she said loudly. "I want a foot massage."

She lifted one of the pale appendages in question, wiggling her toes in his face. Robin coughed and stared at the milky-white arch of her foot.

"_What_?"

She shrugged demurely.

"If you're going to force me to talk about this knowing _full well_ that I don't want to," she said, gazing at him with eyes that said clearly, 'I _really_ wish I'd never mind-melded with you'. "Then I want to get something out of it. A foot massage shall suffice."

Raven wiggled her toes again, more insistently this time, and Robin cursed softly.

"Fine," he said, grabbing her foot in his hand. "Will you talk about it now?"

She glared at him pointedly.

"In a moment."

Robin scowled at her, and rubbed gently but firmly at the sole of her foot. At least, he mused as she relaxed into a practically boneless heap, her feet didn't smell and they weren't sweaty. He was silently amazed at how soft the skin was, at how cute and perfectly rounded her toes were, at the tiny freckle on her instep.

He realized that he could probably spend hours examining her feet and cataloguing every tiny detail and there was a part of him that knew that _that_ was just weird. There was another part that said it was probably more normal than obsessing over a dead villain. A third part of him piped up and pointed out, quite superciliously, that Slade was _not_ dead. Still kneading at the fine flesh and bones of Raven's foot, Robin looked up at her. Her eyes were closed and he could feel her weariness in his own bones.

"I don't know what's going on," Raven whispered after what seemed like an eternity. "I knew something bad would happen on my birthday. I've always known it. I just never expected it to be _this_." She looked up at him, her gaze pained. "I never expected for you to get hurt. I'm sorry."

Robin swallowed hard but didn't look away. Instead he set her foot down and picked up the other.

"I'm not," he said firmly.

Raven blinked at him and he offered her a lopsided grin.

"Well, I _am_, but I'm not. You're my friend, Raven. Whatever's happened to you has always had an effect on all of us. On _me_."

_Today more than ever before_, he thought to himself.

Robin shivered at the memories of the feelings he'd had all day, feelings that weren't his. Usually his connection with Raven meant that he could tell what she was thinking, sort of. She kept a tight rein on her emotions and he did likewise; it was an unspoken agreement between the two of them, a futile attempt at privacy of thoughts and feelings. Today had been different. Today Raven had been a part of Robin in a way no one had ever been a part of him before. Everything that had happened had happened too fast to keep up with and Robin was only sure of two things: Slade was back and Raven was _scared_. Scared for herself, scared for him, scared for _everyone_.

Robin didn't care that he'd been inadvertently dragged into this. He didn't even think about it that way, though he knew Raven did. Raven tended to do that, to think of herself as a burden. Robin thought that somewhere someone had forgotten to teach Raven what it was like to unconditionally love someone. Someone had forgotten to teach her what friends were or what a lover was. He'd tried for a long time to get it through to her that she was a _friend_ not a burden, and apparently she still didn't quite get it.

"Robin . . . if I did something horrible . . ." Raven trailed off and squeezed her eyes shut. "Nevermind," she murmured, tipping her head back.

Robin eyed the column of her throat and spoke, eyes glued to the shaded hollows where her neck and jaw met in subtle curves.

"Raven, I could never hate you," he said, tearing his eyes away from that spot to stare, instead, at her foot.

"No matter what?" she asked hesitantly.

"No matter what," he assured her.

"Even if . . . even if I told you that you have the hands of a god and I'm commissioning you for daily massages whether you like it or not?"

Robin glanced up to see Raven staring at him, completely serious. He just smiled at her and switched feet again, eyeing that odd little freckle and flicking his thumb over it. She let out a hiss and he grinned, thumbing the area again. Her foot twitched, her toes clenching, and she glared at him balefully. So, the lady was ticklish. Robin decided to file that information away for later and resumed massaging the sole of her foot. Raven let her head fall back again, this time with a tiny groan, and Robin felt decidedly smug. He was making her sigh like that. _He_ was making her moan like that.

They didn't say anything more for nearly half an hour. Robin didn't mind. The fact that Raven had opened up as much as she had was enough for him. She'd admitted she was scared and that she was worried and Robin would do his level best to protect her, to help her, to shoulder some of her burden.

It was, he told himself when Raven jerked away seconds before Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Starfire burst into the room, what friends did for each other.


End file.
